Parties fear kingmaker Ukip: Farage

The general election will return a hung parliament and both the Conservatives and Labour “fear” Ukip will hold the balance of power, according to the party’s leader.

Nigel Farage, writing in the Daily Telegraph, outlined Ukip’s major policy areas ahead of his first major speech of the campaign in Essex today.

He reiterated his claim that the party would not enter “any coalition deals with the establishment parties” and said the campaign had been “incredibly dull so far”.

He said: “No-one will have a majority after this election. They all know it. But the thing they fear most is a sizeable number of Ukip MPs holding them to account for you.

“When we say we believe in Britain, we believe in the whole of Britain. We are the only party with representation in all four corners of the UK.

“Ukip is doing as well in the North as we are in the South. We are a party that represents the whole country and, even more importantly, we have broken the class divide in British politics.”

Mr Farage, who is running to be an MP in South Thanet, said the party’s policies – aside from taking the UK out of the EU – included taking those on the minimum wage out of tax, scrapping tuition fees for science and engineering students, stopping HS2 and injecting £3bn more a year into the NHS.

He added he would “fight” for a right of recall for MPs and axe taxes such as the so-called “bedroom tax” and Labour’s mooted mansion tax.